In recent years, a communication environment has been diversified, and various communication modules compatible with a wireless local area network (LAN), a wired LAN, or the like have been mounted in information processing apparatuses.
In the case of connecting such a communication module to a network, authentication may be performed between the network and a relay station. As a technique of simplifying authentication, for example, a technique of using a physical address, such as a MAC address, stored in a communication module is available. A MAC address is an address which is uniquely assigned to each communication module, and is an address which is available as a transmission-source address only in the apparatus. Therefore, an apparatus as a transmission source may be specified by using a MAC address, and thus the MAC address is available as information for easily performing authentication without inputting an authentication code.
Meanwhile, a technique is suggested in which in a case where an apparatus is incapable of connecting to a desired network, the apparatus causes another apparatus to connect to the desired network, and the apparatus connects to the desired network via the other apparatus.
However, as described above, authentication via a relay apparatus is not allowed in MAC authentication. Thus, according to the related art Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2002-300328, connecting to a network that involves MAC authentication via another apparatus is not allowed.